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A study by Britain's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) concludes that 88 percent of self-generated, sexually explicit online images and videos are eventually stolen and uploaded to other websites.

The study analyzed more than 12,000 sexually explicit images uploaded by young people and found that the great majority of images had been stolen and published to what the researchers call "parasite" websites.

These web sites, created to host sexual images featuring young subjects, grab their photos and videos from anywhere they can get it: lost or stolen cellphones, hacked private accounts on Photobucket, Flickr, or Facebook, or from chat sites and Tumblr.

Sarah Smith, IWF Technical Researcher, said: “During the course of our work we encounter large quantities of self-generated sexual content which has been copied from its original location and then uploaded elsewhere to form collections, but this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate the extent to which this occurs.”

Here are a few of the key findings from the study:

A total of 12,224 images and videos were analyzed and logged

The content was on 68 discrete websites

7,147 were images

5,077 were videos

5,001 were both an image and a video

Of the 12,224 images/videos, 10,776 were on parasite websites

88% of content was taken from the original source site

In only 14 instances could analysts not determine whether the site was a parasite website

Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation, added: “This research gives an unsettling indication of the number of images and videos on the internet featuring young people performing sexually explicit acts or posing.

“It also highlights the problem of control of these images - once an image has been copied onto a parasite website, it will no longer suffice to simply remove the image from the online account. We need young people to realize that once an image or a video has gone online, they may never be able to remove it entirely.”